As we all know, towards the end of WOTW, Wells mentions that the Martians have started sending cylinders to the planet Venus, apparently to make up for their failed invasion of Earth. And that's that. Curiosity, however, impells me to ask the $64,000 question, what happened when they got there, and what did they find?

Remember that we're dealing with old-fashioned, pulp-style science fiction here, with the science belonging to outdated astronomical theories. In this case, the astronomer Laplace with his Nebular Hypothesis. In it, he stated that the outermost planets of our solar system are the oldest, and the innermost, the youngest. This is what got all sci fi writers, Wells included, started on the idea that Mars is an aging, dying world with an ancient civilization. After the Swedish astronomer Arrhenius observed the thick cloud cover on the planet Venus, he added this to Laplace's theories and suggested that our younger neighbor planet is either all ocean or mostly ocean with lots of steamy jungles, and is still in the Age of the Dinosaurs.

Personally, I'll go along with this, being a dinosaur fan of long standing. If this was the case, the Martians would be in for a pretty rough time once they landed. After all, if the land area is all fog-shrouded jungle, then their Fighting-Machines would have a hard time seeing a dinosaur in advance and roasting it with the Heat-Ray before it flattened them. And with so much moisture in the air, their Black Smoke gas would turn to dust almost as soon as it left the canister.

Why am I so certain that the dinosaurs would clobber them, assuming the Martians are denied the opportunity to Heat-Ray them at long range? Well, here on Earth, the longest proven dinosaur is Seismosaurus, at 140' in length, while the tracks of a Moroccan giant named Berviparopus seem to indicate that it was 157' long. And Venus is a smaller planet than Earth, which means it has lighter gravity. That means that her animal life, be it dinosaurs or anything else, can grow far larger than it can on Earth. We're talking literal Godzillas here, albeit probably without the radioactive flaming breath. What do you guys think? Sound off!

C. S. Lewis also used the Nebular Hypothesis for PERELANDRA the second book in his COSMIC TRILOGY.
PERELANDRA or Venus is an ocean world with floating islands of weeds and it is a very primitive world. I don't think the Martians would like it there, the tripods wouldn't stand up well on these floating islands

Creatures on Earth only grew larger than the specimens we have today because of the greater amount of Oxygen in the atmosphere, back when Wells' wrote WOTWs they knew that Venus had a huge amount of CO2 in it's atmosphere, Wells was a cleaver guy, I don't think he would have gone for the giant Dinosaur angle.
I know one thing though, The Martians would have found it flaming hot compared to Mars.

Point taken, but there's something else to consider: We don't know what the maximum allowable size of life on Earth IS, now or then.

Consider: The Age of Dinosaurs lasted well over a hundred million years, far longer than our current Age of Mammals. The REALLY big giants didn't appear until the Late Jurassic, which is farther along in the Mesozoic than our "mere" 65 million years. By contrast, when Man appeared, he wiped out most of Earth's megafauna through hunting and---especially---the use of fire to drive game. What's left of the avian and mammalian megafauna has just barely been hanging on, with no real opportunity to grow into sauropod dinosaur-sized giants. Suppose they COULD grow that big today? Where could they possibly find space to evolve, with nearly unlimited supplies of fodder, in a world stuffed with six billion humans and their domestic animals? In short, Man's stiffled today's megafauna to such an extent that we really have no way of knowing how big they COULD get, given the same amount of time the dinosaurs had.

(Note: The largest land-dwelling Cenozoic mammal was a hornless rhino from Mongolia variously called Indricotherium, Baluchitherium, or Paraceratherium. This critter was 25' in length, and stood 18' at the shoulder. Given the fact that it had a pretty thick neck and almost no tail, I think it compares very well in size with most of the dinosaurs.)

We also don't know just how big the dinosaurs of Earth could get. When I was a kid back in the 1960s, the standard dinosaur books said that Ankylosaurus was 15', Stegosaurus was 20', and no duckbill was longer than 30'. Now we know that the first two dinosaurs got to at least 30' in length, and the duckbills have several 40' giants like Saurolophus and Shangtungosaurus. T-rex was 40-50' in length, according to them; in recent years, a giant tyrannosaur was found that was 65' in length. As for the sauropods, they just keep pushing the limit further and further with each new discovery.

What really got me going on this dinosaur jag on the Forum was my Internet book purchase of the novel "Before the Dawn" by the noted scientist and mathematician Professor Eric Temple Bell under his pseudonym "John Taine". In this 1934 work, he postulated that when light strikes an object, it causes that object to record everything that happens around it, so that with a special TV set---which a character invents---one could read that item's entire history. Want to study prehistoric life? Then stuff some fossils in the set. The human characters do this, and are rewarded with a panoramic sweep of the dinosaur era, which eventually settles on four individual dinosaurs. There is the tyrannosaur-type Belshazzar, with his elderly (presumed) parents Jezebel and Bartholomew. Also present is Satan, sort of a cross between a giant raptor and an iguanodon in concept: a meat-eater with a pair of large killing claws, but one on each hand, rather than each hind foot. Here are a couple passages which show how much Bell loved his dinosaurs:

"Passing over that merciless conquest, I shall briefly report on its recoil upon the desert folk---the rapacious, bipedal lizards who stalked through the green silences of the forests in quest of worthy enemies and well earned feasts. They were a different tribe from the cowardly reptiles of the marshes by the flats who attacked only the defenseless. These were kings and conquerors, and they walked like kings. The deserts were their domain; the steaming forests and the plains beyond, their well stocked farms. Their queens laid their eggs in the sands, and promptly forgot them, to follow their mates into battle. The puniest of those giants had the courage of a mad rhinoceros and the direct abandon of an enraged rattlesnake. In point of endurance alone this great race represents one of nature's major efforts. She gave them a long trial---so long indeed that her latest experiments with our own race is as less than a day in the centuries of their existence.
"No one who has seen them in action in the records can patronize these kingly reptiles or speak of them with contempt. They lacked what we call reason, perhaps, but their riches in other respects make us beggars in comparison. Being devoid of the higher faculties which we boast of, rationalization was impossible to them. They acted, and took the consequences of their actions without squealing for quarter, no matter who or what opposed them, and they died as they had lived, without fear. To have seen them is to respect them."

And on Belshazzar:

"Nature never surpassed this magnificent reptile in any of her creations. If he lacked human intelligence, he exhibited a substitute---fierce cunning and consumate skill in forcing his inhospitable environment to yield him the necessities of life---which was singularly like the power of reason. Possibly we who saw him in action judged him too sympathetically. Had we looked at him critically according to our present ethical standards we should have condemned him as a brutal tyrant. But we could not. Belshazzar fought his battles himself. If any life was to be risked, and possibly sacrificed, it was his own which was placed in jeopardy. Further, he fought the entire world, for the whole age was against him and his kind. That he had the instinctive, brute courage to face insuperable odds, even without knowledge of what was against him, instead of accepting the inevitable defeat before he was forced to, was not evidence of stupidity but of sportsmanship. He would see it through to the end, and be damned to it. No apology from any human being is in order. Having seen Belshazzar we respect him, the more perhaps because he was totally devoid of what we somewhat arrogantly call our higher faculties. He was a brute, some would say, but God had made him and he would walk the earth unashamed before his maker, as he had been made."

Back in 1974, the New York-based company Arno Press reprinted "Before the Dawn" in a small hardcover edition. The original 1934 version was by the Williams & Wilkins Company of Baltimore, Maryland. Both editions are long out of print, so if you want a copy, check the used-book dealers.

If it was a land of giant monsters then maybe the Martians could survive there. They are inventive and so could easiy create visual aids to help them see through the fogs. Sonar, Radar, Infra Red, etc. So after a few days there, these great interlects would adapt and invent weapons and vehicles to survive and conquer. However the big threat would still be the tiny ones. Bacteria.
Also the dinosaurs would be set in their ways a little, hunting each other and may pay little attention to the tiny Martians.
The Martians would have also studied Venus as they did Earth and maybe had instruments to peer through the glaze and fog.
They should have gone to the Moon as the Selenites would have been a push over.

If Venus' dominant life forms were reptiles, it would have been inconvenient to the Martians in more ways than one. Remember that the Martians inject the blood of other living creatures into their veins as a substitute for eating and drinking. The scaly hide of reptiles might be too tough for their needles to handle.

Remember also that the reptiles have not only size, but numbers on their side. The Martians can only cram five Fighting-Machines into each one of their cylinders, and can only deliver one cylinder a day via their big gun. If they run afoul of the dinosaurs, many of the large herbivores would live in herds, while the carnivores may be pack hunters. This would be deadly against a mere handful of tripods, particularly with dense fog or mist as cover. (Radar would pierce this, but the Martians didn't have radar on Earth, and we're following the book in regard to their technology here.)

Oh, and carnivorous animals are generally more intelligent than herbivores, so once a cylinder landed, the local predators would be drawn in to investigate. When the first Martians emerge, they might well find something with 6" teeth waiting for them just outside. Granted, the Martians are as large as bears, but bears are pygmies compared to the giant predators of the Mesozoic. And if the Martians can't crawl outside safely, they can't rig their Fighting-Machines.

The scaly hide of reptiles might be too tough for their needles to handle.

If a mosquito can penetrate the hide of a Dinosaur (as shown in Jurassic Park) I don't think the Martian would have much of a problem with a needle, after all these creatures have conquered space travel, I'm sure getting some blood out of a reptile wouldn't be too difficult.
Most of the Dinosaurs on Earth were quite small so if the creatures on Venus follow the same evolutionary path as they did on Earth the Martians could just take the little guys.

Good points Lonesome. The martians could employ various techniqes to keep any giant creatures away as they establish an impenitrable base from which stage a beachhead. They could use sound to scare away the creatures or intensify it to hurt them. They didn't do that on Earth because they had a strategy that worked albiet with a few early hicups, but we know they adapt and invent things on the ground which instantly solves the problem. Once they have secured an area and set up a barrier they could develop their necassary devices, to tame the new world. Early man overcame all beasts when still very primative. Its not really size that's a problem. In fact you could argue that the bigger they are the easier to detect and destroy. Tiny enemies are far harder to deal with as they discovered on Earth.
What we have to accept is that Well's Martians were super inteligent beings, millions of years more advanced than us. Their technology could be less than we expect for the same reasons as it is in the Dune novels.

Oh, and burning the vegetation would be quite a feat, given that we're assuming that Venus' land area is a dripping wet tropical rain forest. Soaking wet plants aren't going to catch fire normally, so burning them would mean the Martians would have to turn their Heat-Ray directly on each individual plant they wanted burned; quite a feat in the jungle, and every Heat-Ray being used for that purpose is one less Heat-Ray at the ready in case something big and hungry turned up.

Of couse your thread is title's what do YOU think the Martians found on Venus.

Alls we've talked about is what you think.

I don't think they found any dinosaurs. I think they found a world where life had only just begun crawling out of the seas. There food supply was all in the Oceans, and the Martians had to build huge fishing machines to catch the larger ocean dwelling aniimals. However the blood of these creatures, gradually drove the Martians insane, and for the first time in eons they became emotional. They began acting very unmartianlike. Tiny inteligent beings that live in the blood of the Sea creatures had manipulated the Martians from within much the same way some species of wasps manipulate oak trees to produce food and shelter for them. Soon the Martians were nothing more than robot like slaves these invisable invaders used as hosts and workers to build a new world out on th land. Now these creatures having with the help of the sixteen fingers of he Martian anatomy have created a civilization on the land that surpasses the Martians. Venus is about to go threw a terrible bout of seismic upheaval and are about to launch an invasion on Earth. We may think the Martians have returned, and in a way they have, but really it is the Venusians who are about to conquer us, and nothing will stop them.

Didn't Wells say the Heat-Ray reached temperatures of 3000 degrees? At that sort of temperature the Oxygen molecules and Hydrogen molecules that make up water would be stripped of their electrons and would separate, in this state they would ignite in the same way water ignites under an Atomic Bomb blast.

Didn't Wells say the Heat-Ray reached temperatures of 3000 degrees? At that sort of temperature the Oxygen molecules and Hydrogen molecules that make up water would be stripped of their electrons and would separate, in this state they would ignite in the same way water ignites under an Atomic Bomb blast.

What about the red weed? Wouldn't it grow so fast it would suddenly snag the foot of an unsuspecting dinosaur and trip it? Then it would grow all over the dinosaur and eventually suffocate it. With that sort of weaponry, the Martians could shoot red weed seeds out of projectile launchers at the native dinosaurs, leaving them prone to the Martian's needles! That way, no Fighting Machines would be needed!

Interesting ideas. (Wouldn't it be cool if reality had allowed for a more hospitable climate on the second planet?)
As for size of Venus & gravity: Venus is only marginally smaller than Earth (by about 400 miles in diameter); they are both so close in size, they are generally regarded as 'twins.' It's surface gravity is 0.88 (as opposed to Earth's gravity of 1). Things falling from the Venusian sky would do so at a slightly slower rate than we're accustomed to on Earth. More to the point, they'd land with slightly less force. (Still enough to kill you if you fell from high enough, though, and not all that much higher than on Earth.)
With the slightly lighter gravity, it's certainly possible to have bigger fauna, but not necessarily of Godzilla proportions.
What about flora? Trees would likely be towering like a Sequoia as the norm, rather than the exception, unless there were strong winds to keep them from developing such great height; I imagine a combination of trees, some sturdy/stocky, some lithe/whispy, both successfully adapted to winds. And surely, some parts of the planet would be relatively wind-free, allowing for the giant trees, too.

Regardless of what life might have been there, it's a bit chilling to think that Earth might have a two-front war to fight against the Martians: those on Venus, and the survivors on Mars...

Regardless of what life might have been there, it's a bit chilling to think that Earth might have a two-front war to fight against the Martians: those on Venus, and the survivors on Mars...

An interesting idea, you wouldn't even need the humans to be the intended target, it could just be two waring factions of Martians using Earth as the battleground.
Have you ever considered writing a book or short story? or have you already done so?

Have I ever written a book or short story? No book yet, but several short stories and one actual published magazine article (Scary Monsters magazine issue 18, back in 1997, but I stupidly used a pseudonym). But if you meant specifically any WotW-related stories, no, I haven't. But I'd like to.
I never thought about a story involving Venus; my comments here were only building upon the thread topic. More on that in a little bit...

Years ago, I thought about writing my own WotW story. Rather than a simple update to contemporary times, set in the then modern 1980's (sheesh, it's been 20 years already?), it was to be a sequel wherein the aliens staged a second invasion of Earth after their Mars 'beach head' failed in 1898*. This time, they've built up immunity to bacteria and have almost 80 years of technical advancements (flying machines en masse) to fight against our 20th century advancements.
In other words, HG Wells' story was actually an historical document, collectively accepted over generations (through accident and/or design) as fiction.
I had my own Thunder Child-esque scene, though, involving what had been planned in the 80's for an upgrade to the Iowa-class battleships, making at least one of them a hybrid battleship/aircraft carrier. (The aft gun turret & some of the aft suprstructure were to have been replaced by a hangar deck & flight deck for Harriers and/or helicopters.)
This description I'm sharing here is about as far as I ever got with the thing, other than a coloured pencil drawing of the battlecarrier Wisconsin getting 'heat-ray'ed. (Believe me, if I ever find the drawing, I'll post a copy of it!)

I'm interested in this whole Venus thing now, though. I'd forgotten about the Venus connection in the Wells book (really must re-read that SOON!), so I'd never even given it a thought. My idea about a two-front war was just a spur-of-the-moment reaction as I was typing stuff about fauna & flora.
I also like your (Lonesome Crow) idea about Earth getting caught in the crossfire between warring alien factions.

I might be persuaded to try tackling something like this, though I doubt it would be 'epic novel' length, and it would be some time before I could actually give it the proper attention it would deserve. Real Life gets in the way. I'm also trying to finish up writing a short story/fan fiction thing elswhere (sci-fi, coincidentally), so my writing skills are tied up at the moment. If I wrote for a living, instead of for liesure, it might be a different thing altogether.

*I know, I know, it's consensus that the story took place in 1903, or 1905... darn it, I have to find that thread again! Anyway, back when I conceptualised my sequel, I was going off the WotW publication date of 1898.

Cool another published author on the forum. I have a couple of ideas for WotW short stories (I'm almost too embarrassed to mention then now) buzzing around in my head, but I am determined not to start writing them down until I've finished 'The Invasion of Earth' or that will never get finished The first story is set a few months after the original Invasion took place, The Martians didn't all die thanks to the arrival of an eleventh cylinder performing an elevenths hour rescue Man is surviving (barley) living underground and the Artilleryman has set himself up as a half mad overlord who drinks a lot and talks a lot but never gets around to putting his wild plans into action (probably just as well), but the real hero is his second in command, an Irishman who builds a successful group of fighters and saboteurs.
My other idea is one I'm not too enthusiastic about, It's set thousands of years after the original Invasion and as in my other idea the Martians survived and man has been living underground with the inevitable consequences they have become squat, white haired, ape-like creatures with large lidless eyes (sound familiar?) The humans that the Martians kept and bred for food have become meek and placid. After thousands of years of battling the underground Humans win but then take over where the Martians left off.

If you find that pic please post it and any WotW short stories you find lying around.

Earlier today while exploring this forum, I came across a thread where some of you speculated about Moorlocks & Eloi as ultimate inheritors of a post-invasion Earth. Funny that you should mention it just hours after I first stumbled across that thread!

I've tried finding that drawing, but it's not with my writing stuff where I thought it would be. I'll have to check my various art portfolis next, which will take some time. (They're scattered to three of the four winds.)

Oh, finally, I should have been more specific: I've written a few short stories, but I don't have any finished WotW stories written. I've written fiction as a passtime, but I never actually committed any of my WotW ideas to paper. Yet.
My one published article was a non-fiction summary about a science fiction tv show, and the creatures therein.

Yes it was something we discussed back in 2005 after one of the forums members (gypsywlf) had had a very vivid dream, I suggested then that some one should write a linking story between WotW and The Time Machine, I played around with the idea for a while but it would only work if you don't find out until the very end of the story that they are no longer Humans like us but have degenerated into Morlocks and Eloi.

You have an art portfolio? can we see some of your work then? Pleeeease

craigr wrote:

I've written a few short stories, but I don't have any finished WotW stories written. I've written fiction as a pastime, but I never actually committed any of my WotW ideas to paper. Yet. My one published article was a non-fiction summary about a science fiction TV show, and the creatures therein.

My portfolios are not professional in any sense, which is really wrong, given that I majored in art with a commercial/advertising emphasis. I never got around to organising them into any 'pro' appearance, because I frankly didn't think much of the work was worth it. (I did get a career tangentially related to my major, though, in the printing industry. I left that after about a decade. Um... This stuff really belongs in the 'intro' thread, doesn't it?)
Anyway, if I find anything post-worthy to this forum, I'll post it. Have to find it, first. I will post some of my kids' WotW drawings in a day or two, though.

I also haven't tried to publish any fiction, mainly because I've been busy working. I have recently done some fanfic (as I mentioned) to get 'back into the groove' of writing, and might polish up some of my stories, and then try submitting them someplace.
I'll have to keep everyone abreast of how things proceed, but at this point, I don't expect to make a career out of writing. (Maybe I should just try it though!)

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